The end of the current expansion is nearly upon us. Raids are ramping down, and at least the ones I see are now more focused on getting people titles rather than acquiring loot (with the exception of a few things, like finishing Shadowmourne). As I look back on Wrath of Lich King, it did a lot of things right, a lot of things interesting, and has some stark differences to how things were handled in the Burning Crusade.

One thing I noticed is the variation in how raid progression was handled. During Burning Crusade it was not uncommon to join a guild that was working through Karazhan, while another guild was in Serpentshrine Cavern, another in Tempest Keep, and yet another in Black Temple. The disparity in raiding progression was commonplace and no one thought anything of it as it was fairly widely accepted.

And maybe I completely missed it, but in Wrath of the Lich King you didn’t find guilds working on old content in terms of progression. I never saw guilds recruiting for Naxxramas after Ulduar. I never saw them recruiting for Ulduar after Trial of the Crusader. It seemed that in this expansion once new content was released the old content died with very few exceptions. Weekly raids being one exception, finishing Val’anyr being another. Guilds didn’t stay in old content like you found in Burning Crusade.

And one reason this may have been was due to loot distribution. The implementation of the Vaults meant gear was always readily available if you had a little luck on your side. The staggered tiers of gear made the new loot obtainable after you put in the time to purchase it. The addition of the new 5-man instances also helped a freshly geared 80 completely skip the need for loot out of the original heroics and attended only for the badges. My Shaman is a perfect example.

This type of loot distribution made it easy to take your guild from heroics straight to ToC10 if you felt the desire. You can call it the “No Player Left Behind” program. Anyone with half the effort to do so could be rocking great gear.

Is this good? Bad? That’s in the eye of the beholder. The prevalence of easy loot changed the way people ran heroics, as AoE became the dominant method of clearing the place. Even undergeared tanks (undergeared is a relative term) felt confident enough to pull huge groups of mobs due the mentality of how heroics were ran. It didn’t make people better players. People still would get hit by Icehowl even with a speed increase. “Standing in large patches of fire is bad” is a concept still lost on a lot of people. But they had gear, and for some content, it was enough to get them through it.

As Hunters we saw our own shift as well. In Naxxramas double Bestial Wrath using Readiness was fantastic. Then the duration was nerfed and Readiness was changed to no longer reset it. And Survival rose. Hunters, in general, conquered Ulduar using Explosive Shot. And it was then outpaced by Marksmanship with the widely available stat of Armor Penetration.

We were able to run the gamut of all 3 specs during this expansion, with each one being the most viable at some point. We saw the rise of “Beastcleave”, giving Hunters a shining moment of being awesome in Arenas. Yet, if you follow Arena tournaments, you were able to see Hunters still get crapped on by Rogues. :)

And we still rock in battlegrounds. Wide open spaces, rooms to run, and packs of people to hide behind. Good times to be had by all.

The raiding philosophy also changed mid-expansion as well. What we saw in Naxxramas and Malygos were bosses that had achievements for not screwing up. Obsidian Sanctum and Ulduar followed this by having triggered hard modes (with some achievements for not screwing up). Trial of the Crusader showed up with two complete separate versions of itself. Finally Icecrown and Ruby Sanctum let you change the difficulty of bosses at will but shared a lockout due to it. The question is which version did the player base like the best?

It’s interesting to see how the different achievements say something about a person. Naxxramas may be a snooze-fest to most people now, but someone who has the Immortal title still went through the raid with a group of people so capable that no one died during a boss fight at any point in time. A bad player in the best gear can still get themselves killed. But on the other hand, the joke on US-Illidan is that “Kingslayer” was the new “Champion of the Frozen Wastes.” I admit, I have the title on three different characters now.

Patch 4.0 is bearing down on us, which will herald the impending cataclysm that is going to be released upon Azeroth. Many classes are undergoing huge adjustments, especially Hunters. I spent just a little while on the PTR and the initial changes have me very excited.

The adjustment to our class, in my opinion, is an awesome direction. But more than just the changes to Hunters, the revamping of talent trees, help menus, interfaces, guild changes, and much more shows that despite what people think, Blizzard isn’t just phoning it in but actively striving to improve the game for everyone. It would have been easy to add 10 levels, a few more talents, and go “Hey look, another island with stuff!”

This shows they are progressing the the Warcraft storyline, old locations haven’t been totally forgotten, and are actively trying to improve player’s quality of life.

And as a side note, I am excited that maybe that Spirit Beast I tamed so long ago might be good for something now.

So, what are your best memories of this expansion? What did you absolutely despise? What are you most looking forward to? Thoughts, comments, etc! Post ‘em!

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About Drotara

Drotara (or BehemothDan) considers himself a geek on many levels. A web developer and programmer by trade, he has no shortage of geeky hobbies. When not fulfilling husband and daddy duties, he enjoys WoW, the WoW TCG, Magic: The Gathering, and great board games with friends and family.

5 Comments

Best so far: Dualspec and the LFG tool, both has improved the enjoyement of the game many times over, especially when playing alt characters.

Despise: Hardmodes. Don’t get me wrong, I love the challenge. But it’s just not the same when you:
1. Has allready seen what’s behind the current boss you’re working, on, as you have allready done them all in normal mode.
2. It’s just like they would add a rootfunction to Heigan the unclean, just feels unwarranted alot of times. I rather have it like in SWP, everything was hard to beginn with. Adding a “Nightmare leve” to it all isnt bringing any enjoyment to it all to me. The normal modes are usually way too easy.

That said, Wotlk was better than TBC even though TBC brought way more to the masses in my opinion when it was released.

I think Wrath became a sandbox for Blizzard to try out some new things to see how they would work. They overhauled many of the more tedious parts of the game. They added siege weapons, the LFG system, variable difficulty boss fights, and phasing. Oh, and let’s not forget achievements in Wrath as it has had a major impact on the game – particularly the economy. (I’ve made some fine money selling pages of Green Hills of Stranglethorn and engineering-crafted vanity pets.)

Wrath had some awesome content. I thought Ulduar was absolutely epic. I was disappointed that my guild at the time (a casual raiding guild) was running short-staffed for the summer months and, upon release of ToC, nobody wanted to run such a challenging dungeon anymore. I never did get to fight Algalon.

At the end of the day, though, I am not sure how much people will look back to reminisce on Wrath. Arthas seemed to be omnipresent in Northrend, which seemed to take away from facing the final boss of the expansion. I think that is one of the reasons Ulduar seemed so grand to me; it had a story related to the Lich King, it made ties to other sections of Lore in a compelling way.

For me, it seemed that after the arrival of the LFG system, the game became more of a one-man show. I was estranged from my long-time guild early in the ICC rotation, so that made matters a bit worse. I became disconnected from the sense of community that was one of the things that got me hooked on the game in the first place. My time was mostly spent facerolling through heroics for gear that would never see raids.

Cataclysm seems to stand poised to restore some of the aspects of the game I have missed. It is trying to improve the structure of guilds, and it adds incentives for guilds to work together for achievements that will give in-game rewards to further improve a variety of gameplay styles. Heroics seem to be getting harder, to encourage people to play with their friends again, rather than just always just queuing with random strangers. CC is coming back and dps players will be valued for skills beyond only their recount statistics. I am excited about the new raid lockout mechanic, as well, that will remove the penalty of grouping with a struggling raid group.

Wrath had some great aspects, but I look forward to a new start with Cataclysm. I think that we will reminisce most the things that we had to suffer which are going away (e.g. Remember how you had to loot 15 different pages off random humanoid mobs to complete the “Green Hills of Stranglethorn” quest? You new guys have it so easy these days.) I hope to find a friendly raiding guild on my new server home to make a fresh start and to be a part of all Cataclysm has to offer.

I was talking in guild in beta the other day, and we came to the conclusion that Ulduar (at its time), was the pinnacle of Wrath content in our eyes. It featured fights so hard at the time some people thought they were impossible, yet it had content at the same time so easy that a monkey could do it. *cough*Kologarn*cough*. It had the potential to be diverse and complex, while still being very accessible to novice players. Ulduar was a big win in all of our books, it’s unfortunate that it was the second tier of content and has since been relegated to “lolcontent” now.

Aertimus yes, it is a bit strange to do thnigs in a backwards kind of way. At the moment I am filling my time with heroics for badges and rep, and then fishing for buff food, and levelling my hunter because she is my herb-feeder. It’s very odd to finish the game and then go back to finish your gear and rep..Anea isn’t it? I wore Bloodsail Admiral for a while, but then lots of people went and got it and it lost a lot of its appeal. The Magic Seeker is an awesome title! I missed the Obsidian Slayer one, so I’m really happy to have this one.

I liked how accessible this expansion was for me, compared to BC (Started playing WoW around 2.4). I didn’t feel like I was behind the curve, getting to experience Naxx through ICC when the tiers were relevant.

I also felt like I’ve experienced a lot of different roles in the expansion, having kingslayer on both my main raiding toon (hunter) and my secondary raiding toon (DK Tank).

Things I liked: LFG Refit for Dungeons, Some raiding level gear being available via badges/VoA, Crafted gear being relatively accessible (Yes, you needed to save those TS cooldowns for yourself in the beginning, but it all paid off in the end), Wintergrasp (So looking forward to Tol Barad) and some of the goofier achievements (Minesweeper, anyone?).

Things I didn’t care for: Method of hard mode activation in ToC/ICC. I liked the Ulduar method a lot more (Change how you handle one mechanic, and it becomes hard mode), the rise of GearScore as the “end all/be all” for pugging/”am I doing this right” toon behavior, the long wait between raiding tiers (12 months in Ulduar/12 months in ICC – it seemed like there was more variety in BC, but maybe that’s because I didn’t raid in BC), and the ease of heroics making everyone forget how to play their toon (They shouldn’t have been the LOL-AOE fest they are, but they also shouldn’t be the “OMG You broke Square, We’re F’d Now” like it was in BC).

Unrelated note: Congrats on the little one (Have a 19 month old myself). They change everything :)